A funny thing happened on the way to gender equality in the military

Having women in the military was really great because, after all, women can hand tough assignments--even combat roles--just as well as men. Oh, except they are now being sexually victimized by their male colleagues, which just doesn't make sense. I mean, if they're equal to men and all.

The problem, apparently, is that some commanding soldiers out there have a "combat persona." That's right. A "combat persona." In the Army, of all places. The next thing you know, they'll start training soldiers to, like, kill people.

The biggest concern, of course, is that all those wackos out there who thought that putting large numbers of women in close quarters with men in military situations would cause problems, like, um, sexual victimization. We can't let these people be proven right.

In order to make sure the critics of women in the military aren't vindicated, we don't need to talk about how women are sexually victimized, since that would give the impression that men and women are different in some way, and that women are physically weaker than men, which we now know to be a myth brought about by an unhealthy exposure to biology, anatomy, history, anthropology, and the literature of basically every civilization that has ever existed.

The first thing we need to do is to make sure that, when we report on things like the lawsuit filed in federal court in San Francisco, we phrase it very carefully. Make no reference to the proportion of women to men involved in the suit so that it appears as if men are being sexually victimized by women every bit as much as women are being victimized by men.

Oh, wait. They did do that.

Anywa, secondly, Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta needs to say something like, "I have men and women in the military who put their lives on the line…to protect this country. Surely we owe it to them to be able to protect them.”

Oh, shoot. In fact, he did say that.

Nevermind.

Is there really a need for more women editorialists?

A group out of Stanford University does not like the fact that men dominate the nation's editorial pages, and they're going to do something about it--namely, train women to write op-eds:

The mission of the OpEd Project at Stanford University is to bring about a sea change in our national conversation, which is currently overwhelmingly dominated (85%) by men.

But one wonders why the increase in the percentage of op-ed writers would "bring about a sea chance in our national conversation" if women's concerns were basically the same as men's. What does this group think we should be talking about on the op-ed pages? Baking cookies?

These women are obviously not hip on the fact that men and women are equal in every way and therefore there is no need to equalize the number of male and female voices.

Maybe some members of the peanut gallery on this blog could give these people a lecture on this.

More evidence on gender difference that we should ignore

From Mark Perry at Carpe Diem:

"Among the 19 students who got a perfect score on the ACT science test in the past two decades, 18 were boys." -- The New York Times

It's just a coincidence that the best science minds are male, of course. It has nothing to do with gender differences, which we all know to be culturally conditioned and to have nothing to do with . There is no difference between boys and girls.

Just keep repeating it.

The fairer sex is also more focused in school, which is why they do better

Here's more information that someone in the Amazon Section of the Bureau of Gender Equity needs to squelch right away. It suggests once again that males and females are ... and I will try to put this in the most gentle way I can so as not to disturb the tender sensibilities of those among the our intellectual classes who get all upset and weepy when such things are suggested ... different:

Gender differences in the distributions of cognitive and non-cognitive abilities might be important in explaining gender differences in the propensities to go to and graduate from college. Gender differences in the means of cognitive measures like IQ are minor, but the degree of variability in cognitive abilities appear to be greater among men than women.

However, the main ability differences between men and women are in the non-cognitive arena. Non-cognitive abilities affect grades and test scores by affecting how much attention students pay to instruction from their teachers, how organized they are in doing homework and preparing for exams, whether they get disciplined for inappropriate behavior at school, and in various other ways.

Oh wait, this reflects well on women. Nevermind.

Trouble in Gender Equality Paradise

Another piece of troubling evidence that men and women are ... how shall I put this ... different:

This is the very interesting finding reported by Susan Pinker in The Sexual Paradox. She is specifically studying the problem that got Laurence Summers into so much undeserved trouble: why are there many fewer women than men at the highest levels of math, science, and engineering? Her answer: when given the choice, women with high aptitude for math, science, and engineering are more likely than similarly gifted men to choose something else.

The oughta' be a law.